Simon and his owls

For the last couple of days, Simon has been obsessed with these three owls. He sleeps with them in his bed and plays with them in the living room, and can often be seen with his arms full of them. He's always had an affinity for owls, so Zac got these for him last spring, but Simon pretty much ignored them. I don't know what exactly piqued his interest all of a sudden, but maybe the picture book from the library called Night Owl, which he declares is his favorite book.

Felix's birthday party

One of Simon's classmates, Felix, had his three-year-old birthday party this morning. Felix's older brother, Oscar, is in Alice's class, so we've known this family for years. The dad runs a business that has inflatables, so at this party there was a giant bouncy castle with a slide. The kids had so much fun in it! The older kids that is, Simon never set foot inside.

Simon focused on the train table, and anything else that had wheels.

The kids did a good job playing and we didn't have to watch them too closely, which was nice.  The most exciting thing that happened was that a gust of wind came and overturned Simon's plate with his cake on it. I'm sure we'll be hearing about that for days. We got him a new piece of cake, so he didn't cry or anything, but it was quite surprising.

Astronomy Days at the science museum

We took the kids to astronomy days at the science museum this morning. We started on the top floor where NASA has a little area teaching kids about space and showcasing their upcoming projects. They had a little trivia game for kids, although Alice was more concerned with watching the disk slide down than asnwering questions. The guy running it, seeing little Alice walk up, asked a softball question: "What color is Mars?" When Alice answered "red" without hesitation, he seemed impressed.

At this booth, Alice was supposed to be learning about how far away the planets are from each other, but really she's just scribbling on paper.

Alice was terrified of this guy dressed up as an astronaut last year, but this year she was willing to get a little closer.

Throughout the museum there was lots of cool booths set up with little minor science experiments. Although we're just going for exposure at this point, it will be really fun when the kids can actually connect this to stuff they're learning in school and in other books and videos.

Alice's Staycation

Simon surrounded by happiness

Simon was finally able, for a few minutes, to let the battery operated Thomas go around the track. Usually he grabs it and freaks out.

Alice and her scissors

Alice sitting on the floor cutting up the newspaper, à la Boo Radley.

"Do you like my cute bunny?" - Alice

Alice at the trampoline park

Sunday afternoon was Henry's birthday party at the Launchpad trampoline park. I'd heard of these, but we had never actually been to one yet. Zac took Alice, and I stayed home with Simon.

Zac says that first the kids had to watch a safety video with a stick-figure that ends up breaking some bones. This scared Alice a bit, but Zac says he eventually convinced her that that would only happen to adults and that she would be safe if she obeyed the rules.

There was a large jumping area.

Another area where you could jump into foam blocks (like a diving board, I guess). Zac says Alice would just bounce on the trampoline, then stand at the edge and jump in. In online videos, you can see that you are supposed to do flips and crazy jumps into the foam.

Another area was for dodge-ball.

When Alice got worn out, she and Anna went to the arcade. They weren't actually playing the games, but they still had fun pretending.

After an hour of jumping, the kids retired to the party room for pizza and cake.

Sunny snow day

The third day of snow, Sunday, was finally sunny and a bit warmer. The kids just played in the yard while Zac cleaned off the cars (which took about an hour, since there was so much ice).

***

Back inside...Simon loves to use the little vacuum cleaner.

Second day of snow - Lots of sledding!

 For the second snow day, we had learned several important lessons from the first that we were able to apply. For example, we let Simon eat half of a chocolate power bar before we headed out, hoping it would give him enough energy to survive without gummies, thus not needing to take his mittens off. We also brought extra pairs of mittens for each kid, so once theirs got wet, they could put on a dry pair. I put Simon in footie pajamas under his coat and snowpants, so he would be all sealed up and not get snow on his belly or ankles. And, we remembered to bring the digger and dump truck. Also, our friends Rob and Kate, who lived in the neighborhood, decided to join us for our morning outing to the park.

It had snowed some more overnight, so there was a layer of compacted sleet/ice with a layer of snow on top. And lots of icicles. Alice loves icicles.

 Simon did not like sledding last year, but this year he loved it!

Simon's hands were getting cold, even in his second pair of mittens, so Zac carried him home, crying. Alice and I took a bit longer, as she needed to make some snow angels on the tennis court, and draw a snow horse with an icicle.

Back at home, the kids ate another good lunch and had good naps. After nap, we just relaxed around the house.

Here's Zac, at the end of a hard day, with his bath-giving glove still on (since Alice isn't in yet), drinking some wine and playing on his phone.

First Snow Day of 2016

By Thursday night, all the schools were declared closed on Friday due to an impending snow and ice storm. We woke up Friday morning (after sleeping in), to the sound of sleet. After a relaxed breakfast, Alice and I did an art project where we cut out colorful shapes and glued them into a picture, based on a children's book about Henri Matisse that we had read the night before. Well, that's what I did, anyway. Alice just sort of cut and colored and glued stuff randomly.

Sera's art - It is surprisingly satisfying to do this.

By 11am, there was enough sleet and snow on the ground to warrant bundling everyone up and heading outside. We were curious about how Simon would do, since last year he hated the snow. He did OK, mainly due to his new-found ability to keep his mittens on for more than 45 seconds.

We pulled the kids on the sleds to the park, where Alice very firmly declared that she did not want to sled into the bushes like last year.

The kids had fun just putzing around the park. Simon asked for his dump truck, which we had not brought. At one point, he went down the slide and got a belly full of snow. He really liked swinging, but his legs were a little exposed and the tops of the boots had collected snow.

Alice went sled riding several times down the hill. She was a lot more into it this year than last year, where she had preferred to just run down the hill.

Simon held up pretty well until he wanted some gummies, and I gave him some, and he took off his mittens to eat them, and then his fingers got too cold, and he cried all the way home.

Alice and I stopped by S-Mart on our way home to get some eggs and bananas. It was fun to pull some groceries home on the sled--it felt very primitive.

The morning burned up so much energy, that Simon eagerly ate all of his spaghetti for lunch and then had room for a giant chocolate chip cookie.

After naps, Alice wanted to go out again, so I stayed home with Simon while Zac took Alice on a walk to the neighborhood pond. The pond was not frozen, but they did have fun building an ice-ball snowman on the way back.